There’s nothing like having that sure fire gem fall to you in the first round on draft day. He’s the big name player who all the fantasy insiders say is lock to put up huge numbers. You know the type, the highly hyped running back that’s guaranteed to score at least 15 touchdowns and add a sweet 45 receptions as the cherry on top. You think of how triumphant it will be to verbally torture your competition at the end of the year for passing on such an obvious keystone player.

Week one comes around and well, things don’t go as planned. You begin to think of easy excuses to pardon your big investment’s disappointing performance. You say the people who ridicule you, “He was going against a good defense, the weather was terrible, and he was just getting a feel for the offense.” When in reality, you’re really beginning to hope that you’re most important pick of the year does not turn out to be a bust. So in a stubborn effort to prove to yourself and others than you aren’t a clumsy drafter, you continue to start you’re preseason big name player and before you know it, you’ve driven your team to an 0-5 record and you’re losing to teams that are starting 8th round draft picks and waiver wire pickups.

My advice to you my friends, do not get bogged down with players that have big names and big histories. Running backs like Shonn Greene was averaging top ten preseason rankings amongst running backs according to almost every fantasy football source. Greene was highly hyped coming into the season mainly because of the amount of carries and catches he was supposed to get due to the departure of Thomas Jones and his solid performance in last year’s playoffs. However Greene has only found the end zone one time has only rushed for 280 yards. For those who weren’t sly enough to handcuff Green with LaDainian Tomlinson, they’re seeing Greene’s “backup” (who had a average draft position of 82nd overall according to KFFL.com) outperform their top pick. Tomlinson is currently 5th in rushing yards and has 15 more receptions then Greene. While some owners stick to their guns and continue playing their high draft picks, other owners learn to adapt to the parody of the NFL have no problem starting players like Arian Foster who had an average draft position of 44th overall. Foster is currently leading the league in rushing yards and is tied for third in rushing touchdowns.

Fantasy Football is a game that consists of knowledge, luck, and instinctual reactions. Drop a player too quickly and he may explode for 200 yards and 3 touchdowns the next week. Hold on to a player too long and he may be the anchor to your sinking ship of a season. At the end of the day, it’s important to realize a bad investment, cut your losses and begin to evaluate other viable options. Otherwise, you’ll have to be happy just having the best team on paper.